Ah, wonderful. The sun is shining, the flowers are sprouting and the birdies are chirping. All the birds? No, a small blue-tit-brat (?) thought the tedious acts of flying about and chirping are somehow boring and thought to himself: "Hey, a rain gutter- yeah- let's go and have a look what it looks like on the inside." Well, what happened after that wasn't very nice for him or me. Instead of enjoying the last rays of sunshine, I was, at first, doubting my own sanity- "Where are these noises coming from?! Could it be, that...?!"- and after that, I was doubting my own fate- "Why me and why right now?" But there was no use in complaining, the silly bird needed to be freed from its prison. After a few failures- with a saw, a screw driver and a hammer- I managed to cut open the buckled rain gutter and, very slowly the feathered friend lumbered into daylight. He stayed sat in the opening for quite a while looking dazed and disappeared, without a "thank you". Pft.

Talking about birds, the blog Creature Comforts- the one with the bird in the logo- is my latest blog-darling. Beside wonderful interior design ideas, charming collages and recommendations for exquisite online shops, the blog owner Ze also functions as a style advisor. The cherry on the cake is the extremely style-savvy layout. That's how to do things the right way! Have a good time everyone & hope to see you very soon!

Even though I've been the owner of a purse of this kind for a quite a long time, the thought never occured to me to write about it on here. Only the benevolent comment of a friend moved the focus back to the Danish company becksondergaard. Beside utterly charming purses - made of eel skin (a "by-product" when producing "Smorgasbrod") - they also sell pretty bags, scarves and jewellery in all kinds of pastel-colours. These Danes just know what good, modern design is! Have a nice weekend. P.S. I don't get to blog each day at the moment- I hope you understand, dear readers, Uni takes centre stage!

Welcome to the eco-department! It's been a few weeks H&M are now selling ecologically-friendly produced clothing, which carries the not-so-creative name "The Garden Collection". Besides the obligatory and not very well chosen flower-pattern dresses- H&M seem to have a problem with patterns in general, in my opinion- there's also some very beautiful pieces. The question remains whether it's really that "eco" to buy another pair of jeans, seeing as most of us have already got a minimum of five pairs in the wardrobe. Nevertheless, the global clothes-multi is going the right way with the launch of its eco-clothes, in that sense maybe one should acquire one or the other item. Although, the best thing to do would be buying stuff off real eco-labels... Well well, green consumption isn't that simple... Have a nice day.

Let's be honest, cupcakes are so last, last season! The gourmet with high affinity to the zeitgeist will rather treat themselves to one or two delicious macarons, or rather "Luxemburgerli", as us Swissgermans call them. Speaking about local patriotism, I'd like to make a contribution to the media-inflated discussion about the "Röstigraben" (literally: "the rösti trench" - slang expression by Swissgermans, used to describe the language and cultural divide between Swissgerman-speaking Swiss and their fellow French-speaking Swiss, the "Romands"). For that matter I'll (almost) only use French for additional information (Je coeur la Romandie).
In the impossible case that the international readership has missed this highly relevant discussion, I would like to explain the state of affairs with a few bon mots from the Swissgerman discussion-show "Zistigsclub": A few Swissgermans see the Swissgerman language, but also the Helvetic way of speaking German threatened by the many German journalists. So what they demand is to teach Swissgerman in schools. Extremists also wish for the "Romands" (Frenchspeaking Swiss) to learn Swissgerman, instead of German, in school, so that a more deepened understanding is possible beyond language borders.

All I say is- "pardon?! Où est le problème?" As a small language minority it should be understood to not talk in a broad Swissgerman dialect to our dear Frenchspeaking brothers and sisters, but in German, or - quelle horreur - maybe even try in French. Is there really any need to discuss this for an hour? Same thing applies to German employees who have come to live in Switzerland. Dear me, how well we are if this is our only problem.

But, enough of this navel-gazing, back to internationality! The Japanese confectioner Hisako Ogita has published a truly charming book about macarons. If anyone would like to sweeten up this beastly weather with some delicacies, here's some different recipies for macarons. Bonne journée et a bientôt!

Mon Dieu! Mister Lagerfeld presented this year's Chanel Cruise Collection yesterday. (A British tv presenter's casual comment to all this: "Beautiful clothes for beautiful people which they'll wear on their beautiful yachts. Jealous? Us? No way...") On the hunt for the recording of it, I came across last year's collection and was - like in O Nine - totally smitten. If I'm honest though, it wasn't so much for the clothes (they were very beautiful, mais bien sur!), but this poetic, melancholic atmosphere Monsieur Karl (and his many helpers) created in Venice really touched me. Venice! Seaside! Dawn! Have a beautiful weekend! P.S. this decadent, ponderous, apocalyptic atmosphere somehow totally matches the weather and Euro-crisis at the moment, n'est-ce pas?

Bonjour, bonjour! Welcome to my little world. Here you see the place that I spend the most time on, apart from Uni and the Café. (More often than not there'll be a cup of café au lait standing around... ). At the moment presentations, work and exams are experiencing a boom. As you can easily recognize from the picture-quality, I have tried my photographic skills once again- well, practice makes perfect. (I blame the camera, of course!)

Wishing you a good start to this short week & hopefully see you soon, all being well. P.S. Jarvis forever!